Gameboard I: Endgame
by DarkBeta
Summary: AU. Wasn't victory always the least likely outcome?
1. Cuzco

Endgame 1, by DarkBeta

_[All characters herein belong to Tatsunoko Productions, even the nameless walk-ons and Galactor goons.]_

_(Jun and Ken share a tender moment, so this must be a warm-and-fuzzy story. Right?)_

The porthole on an upper level of their hidden base was near enough to the surface that the water outside glowed with blue light. Jun found Ken there, sitting against a corridor wall and staring into the blue as he might once have stared into the sky.

He did not notice her at first. She could indulge herself, watching his eyes like windows to another sea. His face had a child's faith even after the battles they'd fought. His hair needed trimming. When had it not?

He'd finally seen her, and looked quizzical as she went on staring. Jun felt herself blush.

"I'm sorry. Do you want to be alone? I just wondered where you went."

"That's all right. Stay . . . if you want to?"

She sat beside him, closer than necessary for a friend and team-mate, but not so close that she couldn't claim innocence. They watched the shifting waters.

"I dreamt . . . ." Ken started, and swallowed.

"Mmmm?"

"I dreamt the war was over, and we'd won. There were parades, confetti, parties . . . . You insisted that I had to dance with you. Afterwards I asked you . . . ."

Jun looked sideways as his voice trailed off. He was the one who blushed, this time.

"Must have been pretty bad. I didn't know you had dreams like that, Ken," she teased.

"N-nothing like that!" he said hastily, hands waving as if to erase any improper images. "I asked you for a date, that's all."

"What did I say?"

"I woke up," he said gloomily.

He put a hand behind his head.

"If my dream had gone on longer, do you think . . . ?"

"I'd have said yes. Ken, I'd say yes . . . to almost any question you asked."

He blushed again, so she wondered what questions had come into his mind, and then she blushed at her own imagined possibilities. After a moment, looking fixedly out at the ocean, he reached one arm to fall across her shoulders.

Jun shifted closer – much too close for a friend and a team-mate – and put her hand down on the floor between them. Ken put his other hand down on top of it. Then, after so many years, they were holding hands. Jun sighed, and leaned against him.

So close to the outer skin of the base, the corridor was chilly, and even chillier as sunset approached and the waters darkened. She couldn't hide her shivers for long.

"We should go back to the others," Ken said.

She nodded reluctantly, and stood up, and stared out the porthole while Ken got up also. He took a while to lever himself up onto the crutches, but she knew he didn't want help. The doctors had saved his leg and most of his foot, but he would never walk unaided again. Jun's good hand moved to cover the bad one, the one with two fingers and a thumb missing, and the last two fingers stiffened into claws.

"Jun . . . ."

His voice was somber. She forced a smile, and hurried to distract him.

"Oh, a fish! I saw a fish, a big one! I haven't seen anything that size for ages. We should tell Ryu. Maybe he can go out with the speargun tomorrow."

Ken let himself be deflected, though she saw familiar shadows in his eyes.

"We need the protein."

Adults had been on half rations for two months. This week, children were too. In this as in so much else, the Kagutai Ninja Tai were considered – insisted on being considered – adults. Ken's blue eyes burned more intensely above hollowed cheeks. Gaunt and waiflike, Jun looked even younger than she was.

They had to grope through dark corridors to reach the main section. The lights were left off, especially if they could be spotted through the portholes. What little energy the base garnered from thermal and solar collectors kept the hydroponics lit and warm. Air was more important than sight.

The ISO survivors stayed clustered in the hydroponics area to conserve heat, and for the comfort of company. Ken and Jun came blinking out of the shadowed corridor. They saw one more than usually gathered there.

"Joe!"

His head turned as he searched for them, from where he sat by Ryu. Ken threaded through the crowd as swiftly as his crutches would let him. Jun followed, smiling apology to those Ken brushed past. She got smiles of acknowledgement in return. Everyone here was familiar with Ken's breakneck pace on the crutches.

She started to hum, a faint lilting tune that had been a favorite on the Snack J's jukebox. Joe took a couple of careful steps to meet them.

"Ken. And Jun," he acknowledged, reaching a hand out.

Ken propped himself on the crutches and caught it in both of his.

"Joe! I'm glad to see you in from the chill for a while."

"It's good to hear your voice, Ken. And yours, Jun."

The black cloth covering his eyes turned toward her. Ryu snorted.

"Now I know how to get noticed. Disappear for a couple days."

Jinpei had been leaning against his shoulder. The boy came forward and clung to Jun instead. The five of them settled back against the metal wall.

"So, how's Hakase?" Joe asked.

"Still working on his whatever-it-is," Ken reported. "He says he's been able to make some remarkable theoretical advances . . . while we wait."

Ryu laughed before anyone could turn melancholy.

"It looks like a still to me. Hakase keeps talking about bubbles and foam, so I have my suspicions!"

"The universal foam, where the structure of universes interpenetrates," Jun explained. "It extends the technology of the God Phoenix effect. We might be able to exchange information across singularities, and look into an entirely new universe!"

"Poor old God Phoenix," Ryu muttered.

"Joe, will you come and visit the lab with us, later on?" Ken asked. "We're not the only ones who worry when you disappear."

"Might as well."

Jun remembered her news.

"Ryu, I saw a big fish. Do you think you could go look for it tomorrow?"

"Sure thing. Watch out, fish!"

oooooooo

Halfway across the globe, a messenger fell to his knees before the King of Earth.

"News, Katze-sama! The camera-fish has found one last hidden refuge of the despised ones."

"Excellent," Katze purred. "We've run low on heretics. They do encourage productivity. Show Me what has been discovered."

Images flickered on the viewscreen. The mound was disguised as a buried atoll. Some tidal surge had ripped away pieces of its camouflage, or it might still have lurked unseen. It was not one of the ISO's larger bases. Galactor would probably harvest no more than half a thousand from it.

Drawn to the glint of metal, the robot fish had discovered a viewport. Light from the surface revealed movement behind it. Katze gasped at the scene. Two of the five – no, six – faces that he loathed most in the world. And where they were, the others might be also.

He watched the clip of video over and over. At last he chose two images to keep and gloat over. A momentary ripple of light that showed the ruin of the Swan's digits. And the Great Eagle, barely able to pull himself up from the floor.

"Surround the base," he ordered. "If any of them are harmed before I arrive, My Inquisition will have work."

Oh, what games a cat could play, with broken-winged birds! The war was over. The Kagutai Ninja Tai had not won it.


	2. Carthage

**Endgame 2**, by DarkBeta

_(Victory has not been good for Katze.)_

In the middle of the night, the viewscreen in hydroponics flickered on. Jinpei started to scream even before the static resolved to Berg Katze's image.

"Did you really think you were forgotten? Overlooked?" he asked. "I'm coming for you now. I'll hold your hand in Mine, pretty Swan. Great Eagle, we'll stand face-to-face one more time."

Jun hunched as if he'd struck her, cradling the damaged hand. Ken was gray-white, and swaying on the crutches.

"The hours until we meet will feel like days. How shall we fill the time? You've been alone in that little underwater shell for a long time. You must be eager for news of those you left behind."

His image dissolved into a montage of faces and bodies in agony. Parents covered the eyes of their children, and closed their own eyes against nightmares. Behind recorded cries for mercy or release, Berg Katze laughed.

"The physics lab is shielded," Hakase said. "His transmission will be blocked."

The ISO refugees fled Katze's laughter as they would a whip. The Kagutai Ninja Tai followed. Joe slammed the lab door shut, cutting off the howls of pain and amusement. Only Jinpei was still screaming.

Ryu carried him. The boy had curled into the smallest possible compass, with his hands over his ears.

"Shhh. Jinpei. Please come back to me!" Jun begged.

At last he looked at her. His last scream trailed into a moan. He didn't speak – he never did any more – but he launched himself from Ryu's arms to hers.

The lab was roomy, a reminder that research was the original goal of the base. Jun was still astonished that everyone could crowd into it.

"How can we scuttle the base?" a man asked.

"Don't cry, honey, don't cry. I promise I won't let him have our baby."

"Thy kingdom come, thy will be done . . . ."

Hakase's voice cut across the whispers, though he had not raised it.

"I need to speak to the Kagutai Ninja Tai."

People looked around. Those closest to where the team stood moved aside, and hissed at others to do the same. The path opened through a crowd so dense it seemed they could barely breath. Hakase waited under the rim of his construction, the project he'd toyed with for the past several months.

"Ryu, can the God Phoenix sustain a brief flight?"

"H-hai. I don't know how quickly I can get down to the launch bay, with no lights in the corridors . . . ."

"I can get him there," Joe said. "I've learned the base's layout. There's nothing left to throw at them, though."

"Except ourselves, and they're prepared for that attack," Ken said quietly.

Hakase rested a hand on the mechanism looming behind him.

"Has Jun mentioned this project? My intention was . . . well, it was a remote possibility. Under normal circumstances I wouldn't risk testing it, even if I had access to a power source. The annihilation of a halfkilometer of the space about us would not be an acceptible cost."

"Now . . . at the very least we rob Galactor of its trophies," Jun said. "If luck is with us, Katze and some of his troops go too."

Across Jinpei's bowed head her eyes were very fierce.

"This machine needs power, Hakase?" Ken asked.

"It can draw the energy it needs from the God Phoenix effect, if the ship is close by."

Ryu looked grim, but he ducked his head in assent. Ken's protest was mild.

"Hakase, we are not what we were. We can't sustain the Phoenix effect, not for long."

It would kill them, he meant. Ryu was in the best shape of the five of them, his weight melted down to bone and muscle. The other four looked like inmates of a Galactor education camp, only a week or two from places in a vast mass grave.

"We aren't necessary," Joe growled. "The five vehicles are docked. Ryu has to pilot the ship, and I have to get him there, but the rest of you would slow us down."

He was being tactful in a way, not mentioning Ken in particular, but perhaps he shouldn't have been. Whatever words he used, Jun thought they could not be as painful as the ones Ken heard.

"Cripple. Useless. Failure."

"True," he said. "Ryu, Joe, are you willing?"

"H-hai," Ryu stuttered again.

Joe grinned joylessly.

"One more chance to make Katze pay!"

Their briefings had no audience, in the past. Jun was startled when she looked away from Ken's white, fixed face and found they were the center of attention. Explanations rippled outward from those nearby, until Hakase raised his hand. The mass of refugees went silent.

"Do we let them try?"

". . . yes . . . Yes . . . Yes! . . . YES!"

"I'm here in front of you, Joe," Ryu said.

Joe's hand found his shoulder without fumbling. The path opened again between them and the door. Ryu took a breath and stepped forward. Joe pulled him to a halt.

"K'so. I almost did it, too."

He turned around.

"Ken."

Ken was slow to answer. Joe had lost control of expressions he no longer saw. Jun saw his doubt, his head turning as he tried to drag information from the buzz of the crowd.

"We're here," Ken admitted.

"You'd let us go . . . and then come after, right? Wander around in the dark until you fall down a stair, or run into Galactor."

"Get started, Joe. You said it already. I'd slow you down."

"The Phoenix goes to face Galactor. Her commander should be aboard."

Reason and desire warred in Ken's face. Reason didn't have a chance. Ken swung a step forward. Jun moved alongside him, and he frowned at her.

"Jun, if you stayed with Hakase . . . ?"

"That question does get a 'no', Ken."

She let Jinpei slide from her arms to stand on the deck.

"You should stay here though, Jinpei. Where we're going will be dark."

Jinpei didn't let go of her hand. He tugged until she leaned over and he could whisper in her ear.

"oneechan," he said, in the smallest of voices, but it was the first word she'd heard from him in months.

"All right, Jinpei."

"Five who move as one . . . ." Joe quoted, with unexpected approval.

The refugees parted for them again. Ryu stopped at the door, reluctant to slide it aside and hear Katze's hated voice again. Ken turned around.

"You have my deepest regrets . . . that I could not live up to the hopes you all had. Hakase, I'm sorry."

"Is that what you believe? That you failed us?"

Nambu's voice was strained and rough. A middle-aged man, one of the engineers, shouldered out of the crowd.

"Those cowards in Earth Gov who surrendered to Galactor, they're the ones who failed us. And the bastards in Command who got the Kagutai Ninja Tai out of the way by sending you to a Galactor ambush!"

"Ten thousand years, team. May you live ten thousand years," Hakase said.

Others took up the chant. When the door slid open, Katze's inveigling voice (and the screams; there were always screams when he spoke) could not be heard.


	3. Masada

**Endgame 3**, by DarkBeta

_(The Phoenix doesn't work like this? They must have rejiggered the engines.)_

The Phoenix stank of mildew and char . . . and blood? Could the smell of blood survive for months in the cold and dark? For all of that, the bridge welcomed them, felt like home in a way the sea-covered base never did.

Ryu was busy at the controls, muttering as he roused the ship to a flight never planned for. Jinpei swayed in a seat he had nearly grown into, smiling in a dream that had nothing to do with the present. Jun waited below the entry, scanning the dark hold for motion, for the Galactor soldiers they'd met once already or for a fading hope.

Ken had stayed at a cross-passage, armed with Joe's gun, to keep the soldiers from following them. Joe had brought them unerringly to the ship. Then he'd gone back. He'd told them not to wait.

Jun couldn't risk believing that she'd see them again. All movement meant, was her turn to stand rear-guard. Her hand worked, wishing for a familiar weight. But she had one whole hand still, and shards of glass or twisted steel could kill as well as feather shuriken. She circled away from the lights of the Phoenix, balancing an improvised blade.

"Almost there. Hang on!"

"I'm f-fine. Don't make a fuss."

It was too much fortune. Jun's voice wavered as she called.

"Joe? K-ken?"

"They're behind us. Help me get Ken to the ship. He's hit, and he won't tell me how bad it is!"

Joe appeared in the dark, more dragging Ken than supporting him. Jun was afraid Ken wouldn't be able to reach the hatch. If he was left . . . if she stayed with him . . . . The hold would flood as the Phoenix escaped.

Joe leapt up, following her voice. He reached back for Ken, and somehow they managed to lift him. Jun scanned the hold one more time. Galactor hadn't found them yet. Well, Gatchaman had schooled the soldiers not to pursue too quickly. She leapt up herself, almost ashamed of the flashing casual flight that Ken had lost.

He coughed, and spat out the open hatch. From the whiteness of Joe's face, Jun knew he'd heard what she saw, the wet dark blood on Ken's mouth. Ken shook his head at her.

"They tagged him, but it's nothing to worry about now," she told Joe.

She knew he wasn't fooled, but Ken smiled approvingly. Jun hadn't lied though. She knew how Hakase's device was supposed to work. Survival past the next half hour, meant only failure and tragedy.

"Is the hatch dogged?" Ryu called. "Get to your seats. We're taking off . . . now!"

oooooooo

In Katze's dreams he killed the Kagutai Ninja Tai, and resurrected them to kill them again, while Sosai X watched and approved. Fire and water, rope and blade . . . so many choices. Exchanging dreams for reality would be something of a sacrifice, but a sacrifice he hurried to.

The ISO fools had collected themselves for his coming. His soldiers circled them, destroying the walls they skulked behind, but held back from killing. If any of those six died, swiftly and away from his view, the soldiers knew what Katze would do to the ones who allowed it.

He saw fear, most satisfactory fear, but too many faces. He could not see the ones he sought. He howled.

"Where are they? Give them to Me!"

"I'm here, Berg Katze."

At the center of the crowd, Nambu Hakase pulled himself up onto some humming mechanism. Katze surveyed the changes in his enemy. Gaunt face, white hair, a tremor in one arm that he tried to conceal . . . . The man's torment was well begun.

"Where are your nestlings, Nambu? Hiding?"

Incredibly, Nambu smiled.

"Ask your soldiers what they found in the dark. Ask your captains if they remember the ship they face now. Ah, but I forgot. The ones who faced her before are gone."

Katze knew, before he heard the panicked voices of his captains, before the feed from his flagship's bridge appeared on the screen behind Nambu. A ship that was part sacred bird surged from the sea, and flamed as she rose. He laughed.

"They'll surrender. To save you, they'll surrender. You cannot fight Galactor. Have you learned nothing, Hakase?"

He had to raise his voice. The mechanism where Nambu perched hummed louder. The ISO personnel crowded closer to Nambu. Sparks flowed like water over them.

"Katze-sama, the radiation levels are rising," an aide hissed to him. "The instruments aren't set up for this. What are they doing?"

Someone handed a toddler up into Nambu's arms, that laughed and reached for the killing sparks. He held it with the ease of experience. He smiled at Katze again, the same eerie expression.

"I learned this much from Galactor; how to cause a secret base to self-destruct."

The King of Earth ran. Silver fire lapped at his heels.

oooooooo

"It's working," Jun gasped.

They could see the flow of energy, lines of silver trailing down into the sea. To the side of that linkage a tiny craft shot up. Berg Katze had escaped again.

"One shot. If we just had one shot left!" Ryu groaned.

The Galactor ships had scattered at the sudden rise of the Phoenix. Once Katze's craft docked, the swarm moved in again, closed into a dome around the ISO's last ship. There was nowhere to dodge.

"Hold," Ken ordered, as Ryu's hands moved on the controls. "They can't hit the base while we're in the way."

"Hai."

Ken had no words after that. No commands. He tasted blood in his throat at every breath.

The fire of the Phoenix Effect felt . . . different. Silver glittered at the edge of his sight, sparks that vanished when he tried to focus on them. They would endure until the fuel was gone, the Phoenix Effect exhausted. The ship would fall like a meteor then. Even if Nambu's plan failed, the base might be destroyed.

Would he know the end? Or would the fire seem endless? Ken felt a sudden irrational conviction that what he and the team endured was not just an effect, but somehow a source of the Phoenix's power.

("Let the fire burn, before I die and after," he offered. "Only let this world be free!")

He did not understand, when he saw Ryu slump forward. One hand lay across the controls like a caress. Ryu was the strongest of them, the one who should survive longest.

Silver flames, and whispers.

"Peace."

Ryu had hated waiting in something like safety while the others ventured into Galactor bases, but he had done his duty. That last time . . . concealing the Phoenix, setting time-delay fuses so she'd be kept from Katze's hands if he didn't return, coming to find his team-mates whether or not they still lived . . . . It shouldn't be Ryu who had to watch the others die. He'd already come too close to it.

When Jun cried out Ken didn't look to her, but to their youngest. Jinpei had fallen against the back of his seat. He was grinning, the old expression of pure confidence. He didn't feel the flames.

The silver whispered, "Safety."

No, it shouldn't be Jinpei left alone, either. Ken did turn to Jun then, and saw the same resignation in her eyes.

She stood up, coming toward the command chair, though she shouldn't be able to move in the flow of the Phoenix Effect. A step away from him she settled to the floor, leaning against the arm of the chair. Once she sat against a boulder like that, resting from a beach walk. He remembered the angle of her shoulder, and the way her hair fell across her cheek.

One hand landed on the chair arm like a dove. Ken forced himself to move, to catch and hold it before that too fell out of his reach.

"Love."

Joe was fighting, embracing pain as an ally, though for all he knew he was already alone. Ken tried to call to him and only coughed helplessly, but Joe turned toward the sound. Then he leaned back in his chair, out of Ken's view except for one hand clenched in a fist. The hand opened. The fingers uncurled and were still.

"Rest."

Ken had hoped it would be otherwise, but that was cowardice. He was the commander. It was his obligation to see that the others were . . . safe.

The Phoenix Effect turned to wisps and ended. The ship began to fall. Galactor opened fire, not willing to allow her death without their interference.

The cabin cracked apart. Ken saw sky, and wings. Jun's hand slid from his grasp. He shouted protest, and the spray of blood fell with him.

Falling and dying, he spread his arms and remembered flight.

"Success."


	4. Petra

**Endgame 4** by DarkBeta

_[All characters herein belong to Tatsunoko Productions, even the nameless walk-ons and Galactor goons.]_

_(To quote Marvel Comics, "This issue . . . everybody dies!" Well, everybody but Sosai X, who'd probably prefer it.)_

The Phoenix exploded. They had escaped. Nambu, dying in whatever radiation bathed the undersea base, and Gatchaman. Katze hoped it had hurt. He hoped they were broken and burned before the end, screaming in terror as they fell with the wreckage. Hope was all he had left.

"Katze-sama, should we retreat?"

The shock wave looked like white feathers arcing across the sky, a hawk's head shrieking. The illusory wing swept toward the flagship. Katze flinched.

Nothing happened. Smoke and light and imagination, the wings were no more than that. The smoke wisped away. The wreckage fell toward the ocean, with worms of that strange radiation writhing across it. The water steamed and bubbled. The waves seamed over the last trace of Gatchaman.

A glowing surface surged out from the sunken base, like the back of a white whale, like a giant's head rising from the sea, like a dome of milk-white crystal. His captains screamed. Ships collided as they veered and tried to retreat. Fleeing ahead of them all, Katze saw the curve of energy race after him, swifter than any ship or earthly power. He called to the only power that had ever aided him.

"Sosai, help Me. Save Me!"

The awareness at the back of his mind stirred and investigated. Through his eyes it saw the silver fire, the memory of Hakase's machine. It pulled away.

"No! You can't leave Me alone!"

Katze felt emptiness where there had always been presence. He refused to be sundered. He . . . gripped, held on as his master screamed in frustration and fear. He was using skills of the mind that he never knew he had, that Terrans never guessed at. They were the reason Sosai X had chosen him, the reason he was its vehicle and tool.

Katze smiled.

"Never alone," he sighed, and heard Sosai scream again as the sphere of destruction took them.

For one of Sosai's kind, physical destruction was a remote possibility. Madness . . . was not so difficult.

In a fortress among mountains, Galactor soldiers ran from something like darkness or like fire. When they were dead – and they did die, every one – eyes in the dark went on hunting for something stolen, for an understanding that was gone forever.

In the centuries that followed, adventurers came to the ruined fortress. None of them left again. Finally stories and rumors were forgotten, and nobody came at all. The eyes still searched for what was lost, alone and impotent for all the remaining years of Earth.

The highest ranking Galactors made themselves warlords. They feuded, each with their neighbor. The cream of their warships had been in Berg Katze's escort though, and those ships were lost. Here and there, where the Galactors were stupid or the people they oppressed were desperate, rebels arose. War surged across the world.

Not everyone died. War's oscillations were damped. For several thousand years mankind worked its way back from the edge of extinction. No hidden intelligence guided or thwarted them.

When the aliens came, they found a people who lived gracefully and well. Terrans were never again a numerous people, but the ideas of Earth became part of a galaxy's culture.

As the centuries went by, winged deities symbolized what was best and strongest in the human spirit. However history never knew of a ship's last flight, with a dying captain and a blind gunner, and a crew that went knowingly into the fire.


End file.
